Batman v Superman has been out for a little over a week now. With half a billion dollars in the bank, its theatrical run just beginning, and with one film done, one film in progress and one starting in less than a week, I think it’s a safe bet that we will be seeing more from the DC Extended Universe. What does the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) future look like? I think it can only get better. This article will not focus so much on Batman V Superman, or if it was good or bad. Instead, we will look at the films still to come. I do feel that I should state that I loved Batman v Superman, and after a second viewing, my opinion on it has only gotten better. While there are some flaws (Alexander Luthor Jr.), I believe that it was a good beginning for what is still yet to come.

Like the Marvel Universe, all the films in the DCEU will have different directors, with Zack Snyder acting as a guide to keep the films cohesive, and he will also serves as director of the two upcoming Justice League films. Most people have become adamant about this not happening. Some going so far as to start a petition to have him removed from the director’s chair. I believe this would be a mistake. I believe the fault lies not with the director but in the studio. Most fans and critics praised his work on the mega hit 300 film, and unlike most viewers, I enjoyed the Watchmen film. There is no denying that the man knows how to set up a shot. I think he was overloaded with plot points, cameos, and story lines that Warner Bros. forced him to add to set up for future DCEU films . You can nitpick a film to death, and I think that’s just what Warner did with Batman v Superman. My guess is we can expect better work from Snyder once he has more control over future films without so much studio interference. He is also a huge comic book fan. It would be better to have someone who cares for the source material, rather than someone who is looking to bolster their resume.

Some of the biggest complaints over the film that I have heard is there was no humor. That it wasn’t like the Marvel films, with the running joke: they should let Marvel have the license back. That it was full of plot holes. DC isn’t exactly known for bright, cheerful stories. Especially, when you look at Batman mythologies in comics and films. The DCEU is setting itself up to mimic the dark, more mature story lines that DC is known for. The DCEU was never meant to be like Marvel. If it was, I’m sure people would complain that it’s too much like the Marvel Universe. The audience in the theater for my second viewing didn’t think the film was humorless. There was humor, it was just more subdued and not out of place. That being said, these films will not be an entire family affair. This could hurt the final numbers in the long run, but possibly create better films. As far as plot holes go, when I’m watching a film that I know is part of an ongoing franchise, I see plot holes as openings for future films to fill. It’s always fun to speculate about how things are going, or why something happened. When the new films in the DCEU released, and these questions are answered, with that said, Batman v Superman might be better received.

When can we expect to see what the DCEU can really do? I don’t think that Suicide Squad will make that big of an impact on the Universe as a whole. We probably won’t see most, if any, of those characters again. I’m sure we will see one in the Batman solo film, I for one am hoping that it’s Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaue’s Killer Croc. It would be interesting to see Batman face off with Killer Croc for the first time outside of animation and comics. It still remains to be seen if any actors in the film will be powerful enough to make a return, but it would be a break from the Joker norm. The first big test for the new DCEU will be the Wonder Woman film. In the past, Wonder Woman, The Flash, and Aquaman have not been considered big enough draws to get their own films. While she was considered one of the best parts of Batman v Superman, it remains to be seen if she, or any of the others, can hold their own, on their own. With a proven director, and an actress that turned out not to be miscast, the film could turn out to be great.

For the rest of the films, details are a closely guarded secret. Aside from a few actors, Jason Momoa (Aquaman), Ray Fisher (Cyborg), Ezra Miller (The Flash) and Dwayne Johnson (Black Adam), directors James Wan (Furious 7) who will be directing Aquaman, and Seth Grahame-Smith who is being looked at to direct The Flash, nothing else is known. As far as we know Green Lantern, who we assume will be in Justice League Part One, has yet to be cast. Possibly even the character that will appear has not even been chosen yet. With quite a few human Lanterns to chose from it is anyone’s guess as to who Warner and Snyder will chose. Theories suggest that they will go with the John Stewart Lantern to distance themselves from the 2011 Green Lantern film. With Snyder’s love for the source, it’s possible that he will want to go with Hal Jordan, but will Warner let him? Will Shazam join the League? He has been known to before be part of the League, or will he remain unaligned yet stay within the same universe as the League and feel their impact? With the only solo film featuring a hero that we have already seen, we will not have a change to see what Cyborg, The Flash, and Aquaman can do before they team up in Justice League Part One next year. This may have some fans worried, with an excellent choice in Wonder Woman and a Batman that might be one of the best ever, the others should prove up to the task as well.

With the studio requesting re-shoots and new scene for Suicide Squad has everyone rumbling that Warner is trying to fix mistakes made by Batman v Superman. Warner is saying that the studio is trying to add more of the humor that was well received in the last trailer, and to inject more action. Personally, I for one hope that they don’t change the dark tone for that of Marvel’s lighthearted, almost camp feel. I don’t think they’ll go that far, and with the lineup they have, we could see more dark humor.

Whatever the reason, we will have to wait until August 2016 to find out for sure. Two more films have been recently added to the list of films that we will see before 2020. We are still in the dark as to their titles and what heroes they will use. Rumors range from Man of Steel 2, to Lobo, to a Booster Gold/Blue Beetle team-up film. With the acclaim praise that Ben Affleck’s Batman has been receiving, and the news that his solo Batman film script not only done, but well received by Warner as well, is a sure thing for the October 2018 date. So what is the other? Love it or hate it it’s not doubt that Batman v Superman has been profitable, it may not make its first projected numbers, but the addition of more films probably means that Warner made some money off it. It is possible that we could see a sequel to the film. While Batman v Superman 2 would make little sense as their friends now, a World’s Finest or Trinity film shouldn’t be left out of the rumor pool. Below you will find the schedule for the upcoming DCEU films. What do you think is in store for the DCEU? Comment and let us know your feelings for the future.

Categories

Preorder Here!

Top Stories:

Back in 2016 a startup called SearchInk, launched out of Berlin with the aim of combining machine learning with handwriting recognition. The upshot would be the ability to semantically label handwritten documents. Pretty nifty. It went on to raise €4.2 million in seed funding, but after developing this AI to read hard-written documents, it went in search of a market and business model. Not an easy thing to do. After all, what industry needs hand-written documents read at scale, when so many documents today are born digital in the first place? It turns out there was one after-all: the insurance industry.
In that sector, claims forms, emails and invoices are currently processed manually. But CEO and co-founder Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss realised that her company’s technology could significantly reduce the time and cost spent on administrative tasks, as well as the risk of human error.
So today, SearchInk rebrands as omni:us, a next generation AI service with two main products aimed squarely at the insurance industry: omni:us Claim and omni:us Policy. The idea is to be able to process digital documents, some of which contain handwriting, by classifying them and extracting the valuable data.
Omni:us is launching these products first in the DACH region, and claims to be working with over half of the top 10 insurance providers. It also says it can deploy its claims management and policy extraction products into an organisation within a matter of weeks. It’s now raise a total of $6.5 million from individual angels and VC, including Anthemis.
Quidenus-Wahlforss said: “Industry predictions show that insurance data will grow by 94% in 2018, 84% of which will be in highly variable documentation. However, in the future, there is also huge potential to apply omni:us technology to many other diverse industries such as finance, manufacturing, transportation and healthcare.”
She added that “We see customers improving their claims turn around time by 80% and all of that at 75% of the original costs. Why is this the case? Fundamentally, because with omni:us manual interventions can be reduced to a minimum, due to the supervised machine learning approach. One of our clients could speed up the comparison by an average 90% at only 80% of the costs.”
Furthermore, the AI could analyze policies with an annual value of only 250 Euro, which normally be a waste of a human being’s time and effort.
Omni:us is now in the process of raising a further funding round this year, opening an office in the US and growing its team.
... Read More

VentureFriends, the Athens-based VC that has backed the likes of Homie and Weengs, is announcing its new fund, with a first closing of €45 million.
‘VentureFriends II’ sees the VC firm pick up where its original €20 million fund left off, with a remit to do seed investments in Greek startups and beyond that have global ambitions.
Specifically, the VC fund, which counts LPs as the European Investment Fund, the Greek ESIF FoF, Equifund and several individuals and family offices, is on the look out for seed-stage tech startups in its sweet spot of e-marketplaces, e-commerce, and SaaS.
I’m told it plans to write a company’s first cheque of up to €1 million. There’s also the option to add another €5 million to the fund, with a final closing target of €50 million, although this may not come to fruition.
Notably, VentureFriends’ second fund has already disclosed a first investment, participating in Stasher’s recent funding round. The startup (formerly known as CityStasher) is billed as an ‘Airbnb for luggage’ and offers a network of brick and mortar businesses across Europe that will store your luggage for a few hours in between commutes.
Meanwhile, the two year-old ‘VentureFriends I’ made 21 investments during its lifetime, which feels like a pretty rapid deployment of capital. These have mostly been in Greece-based startups with an international outlook, including Blueground, a company offering high-quality mid-term accommodation for business executives ad expats. The company manages over 700 properties in New York, Dubai, Athens and Istanbul.
Another example cited by VentureFriends is Welcomepickups, which two years into existence is now present in 20 cities in Europe and Asia. The startup can be thought of as a travel concierge, spanning transfer services, essential products, pre-ordered tickets to top attractions, tips and tailor-made experiences led by locals.
The two Partners of VentureFriends are Apostolos Apostolakis and George Dimopoulos. Apostolakis previously co-founded e-shop.gr, the first e-tailer in Greece, and in 2011 he co-founded e-food, a food delivery marketplace acquired in 2015 by Delivery Hero, providing a major exit for the Greek startup ecosystem. He and Dimopoulos were also among the first angel investors in Taxibeat, the taxi app that sold to Daimler in February 2017.
... Read More

Back in 2016 a startup called SearchInk, launched out of Berlin with the aim of combining machine learning with handwriting recognition. The upshot would be the ability to semantically label handwritten documents. Pretty nifty. It went on to raise €4.2 million in seed funding, but after developing this AI to read hard-written documents, it went in search of a market and business model. Not an easy thing to do. After all, what industry needs hand-written documents read at scale, when so many documents today are born digital in the first place? It turns out there was one after-all: the insurance industry.
In that sector, claims forms, emails and invoices are currently processed manually. But CEO and co-founder Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss realised that her company’s technology could significantly reduce the time and cost spent on administrative tasks, as well as the risk of human error.
So today, SearchInk rebrands as omni:us, a next generation AI service with two main products aimed squarely at the insurance industry: omni:us Claim and omni:us Policy. The idea is to be able to process digital documents, some of which contain handwriting, by classifying them and extracting the valuable data.
Omni:us is launching these products first in the DACH region, and claims to be working with over half of the top 10 insurance providers. It also says it can deploy its claims management and policy extraction products into an organisation within a matter of weeks. It’s now raise a total of $6.5 million from individual angels and VC, including Anthemis.
Quidenus-Wahlforss said: “Industry predictions show that insurance data will grow by 94% in 2018, 84% of which will be in highly variable documentation. However, in the future, there is also huge potential to apply omni:us technology to many other diverse industries such as finance, manufacturing, transportation and healthcare.”
She added that “We see customers improving their claims turn around time by 80% and all of that at 75% of the original costs. Why is this the case? Fundamentally, because with omni:us manual interventions can be reduced to a minimum, due to the supervised machine learning approach. One of our clients could speed up the comparison by an average 90% at only 80% of the costs.”
Furthermore, the AI could analyze policies with an annual value of only 250 Euro, which normally be a waste of a human being’s time and effort.
Omni:us is now in the process of raising a further funding round this year, opening an office in the US and growing its team.
... Read More

VentureFriends, the Athens-based VC that has backed the likes of Homie and Weengs, is announcing its new fund, with a first closing of €45 million.
‘VentureFriends II’ sees the VC firm pick up where its original €20 million fund left off, with a remit to do seed investments in Greek startups and beyond that have global ambitions.
Specifically, the VC fund, which counts LPs as the European Investment Fund, the Greek ESIF FoF, Equifund and several individuals and family offices, is on the look out for seed-stage tech startups in its sweet spot of e-marketplaces, e-commerce, and SaaS.
I’m told it plans to write a company’s first cheque of up to €1 million. There’s also the option to add another €5 million to the fund, with a final closing target of €50 million, although this may not come to fruition.
Notably, VentureFriends’ second fund has already disclosed a first investment, participating in Stasher’s recent funding round. The startup (formerly known as CityStasher) is billed as an ‘Airbnb for luggage’ and offers a network of brick and mortar businesses across Europe that will store your luggage for a few hours in between commutes.
Meanwhile, the two year-old ‘VentureFriends I’ made 21 investments during its lifetime, which feels like a pretty rapid deployment of capital. These have mostly been in Greece-based startups with an international outlook, including Blueground, a company offering high-quality mid-term accommodation for business executives ad expats. The company manages over 700 properties in New York, Dubai, Athens and Istanbul.
Another example cited by VentureFriends is Welcomepickups, which two years into existence is now present in 20 cities in Europe and Asia. The startup can be thought of as a travel concierge, spanning transfer services, essential products, pre-ordered tickets to top attractions, tips and tailor-made experiences led by locals.
The two Partners of VentureFriends are Apostolos Apostolakis and George Dimopoulos. Apostolakis previously co-founded e-shop.gr, the first e-tailer in Greece, and in 2011 he co-founded e-food, a food delivery marketplace acquired in 2015 by Delivery Hero, providing a major exit for the Greek startup ecosystem. He and Dimopoulos were also among the first angel investors in Taxibeat, the taxi app that sold to Daimler in February 2017.
... Read More

<p>Back in 2016 a startup called SearchInk, launched out of Berlin with the aim of combining machine learning with handwriting recognition. The upshot would be the ability to semantically label handwritten documents. Pretty nifty. It went on to raise €4.2 million in seed funding, but after developing this AI to read hard-written documents, it went in search of a market and business model. Not an easy thing to do. After all, what industry needs hand-written documents read at scale, when so many documents today are born digital in the first place? It turns out there was one after-all: the insurance industry.</p>
<p>In that sector, claims forms, emails and invoices are currently processed manually. But CEO and co-founder Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss realised that her company’s technology could significantly reduce the time and cost spent on administrative tasks, as well as the risk of human error.</p>
<p>So today, SearchInk rebrands as <a href="https://omnius.com/">omni:us</a>, a next generation AI service with two main products aimed squarely at the insurance industry: <a class="crunchbase-link" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/omni/" target="_blank">omni:us <span class="crunchbase-tooltip-indicator"></span></a> Claim and omni:us Policy. The idea is to be able to process digital documents, some of which contain handwriting, by classifying them and extracting the valuable data.</p>
<p>Omni:us is launching these products first in the DACH region, and claims to be working with over half of the top 10 insurance providers. It also says it can deploy its claims management and policy extraction products into an organisation within a matter of weeks. It’s now raise a total of $6.5 million from individual angels and VC, including Anthemis.</p>
<p>Quidenus-Wahlforss said: “Industry predictions show that insurance data will grow by 94% in 2018, 84% of which will be in highly variable documentation. However, in the future, there is also huge potential to apply omni:us technology to many other diverse industries such as finance, manufacturing, transportation and healthcare.”</p>
<p>She added that “We see customers improving their claims turn around time by 80% and all of that at 75% of the original costs. Why is this the case? Fundamentally, because with omni:us manual interventions can be reduced to a minimum, due to the supervised machine learning approach. One of our clients could speed up the comparison by an average 90% at only 80% of the costs.”</p>
<p>Furthermore, the AI could analyze policies with an annual value of only 250 Euro, which normally be a waste of a human being’s time and effort.</p>
<p>Omni:us is now in the process of raising a further funding round this year, opening an office in the US and growing its team.</p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:2mJPEYqXBVI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=2mJPEYqXBVI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:-BTjWOF_DHI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?i=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:-BTjWOF_DHI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?i=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~4/LMM9Mpjs28M" height="1" width="1" alt="" />... Read More

<p><a href="http://www.venturefriends.vc/">VentureFriends</a>, the Athens-based VC that has backed the likes of <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/20/homie/">Homie</a> and <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/23/weengs/">Weengs</a>, is announcing its new fund, with a first closing of €45 million.</p>
<p>‘<a class="crunchbase-link" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/venturefriends/" target="_blank">VentureFriends <span class="crunchbase-tooltip-indicator"></span></a> II’ sees the VC firm pick up where its <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/03/venturefriends/">original €20 million fund</a> left off, with a remit to do seed investments in <a href="http://tech.eu/features/18161/athens-greece-startup-ecosystem-report/">Greek startups and beyond</a> that have global ambitions.</p>
<p>Specifically, the VC fund, which counts LPs as the European Investment Fund, the Greek ESIF FoF, Equifund and several individuals and family offices, is on the look out for seed-stage tech startups in its sweet spot of e-marketplaces, e-commerce, and SaaS.</p>
<p>I’m told it plans to write a company’s first cheque of up to €1 million. There’s also the option to add another €5 million to the fund, with a final closing target of €50 million, although this may not come to fruition.</p>
<p>Notably, VentureFriends’ second fund has already disclosed a first investment, participating in Stasher’s recent funding round. The startup (<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/09/citystasher/">formerly known as CityStasher</a>) is billed as an ‘Airbnb for luggage’ and offers a network of brick and mortar businesses across Europe that will store your luggage for a few hours in between commutes.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the two year-old ‘VentureFriends I’ made 21 investments during its lifetime, which feels like a pretty rapid deployment of capital. These have mostly been in Greece-based startups with an international outlook, including Blueground, a company offering high-quality mid-term accommodation for business executives ad expats. The company manages over 700 properties in New York, Dubai, Athens and Istanbul.</p>
<p>Another example cited by VentureFriends is Welcomepickups, which two years into existence is now present in 20 cities in Europe and Asia. The startup can be thought of as a travel concierge, spanning transfer services, essential products, pre-ordered tickets to top attractions, tips and tailor-made experiences led by locals.</p>
<p>The two Partners of VentureFriends are Apostolos Apostolakis and George Dimopoulos. Apostolakis previously co-founded e-shop.gr, the first e-tailer in Greece, and in 2011 he co-founded e-food, a food delivery marketplace acquired in 2015 by Delivery Hero, providing a major exit for the Greek startup ecosystem. He and Dimopoulos were also among the first angel investors in Taxibeat, the taxi app that <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/27/daimler-close-to-buying-taxibeat-in-greece-for-around-43m/">sold to Daimler in February 2017</a>.</p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:2mJPEYqXBVI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=2mJPEYqXBVI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:-BTjWOF_DHI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?i=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:-BTjWOF_DHI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?i=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~4/01B29ewfaDk" height="1" width="1" alt="" />... Read More